I definitely had some trepidation going into this. First of all, this race started at 10am – that’s late. Most races start around 7am-8am, so 10am throws my whole ‘thing’ off – and that’s because my ‘thing’ involves eating no more than a roll and drinking a little water before I run. Easy to do before 8a… a little bit harder to wait till almost 11am after running. So I had breakfast… a wonderful breakfast of oatmeal and ‘grapefruit’ :)… but when you have a routine and that routine changes, doubt definitely creeps into your mind as to how it will affect you.

Secondly, “Gach’s 4am Airport Shuttle”! My best friend needed a ride to the airport. There aren’t many reasons I can think of that I wouldn’t have done this (death and half-marathons come to mind right off the bat) but, since he’s now training with us to do the LBI 18-Mile Run, I’d be lying if I didn’t think that the 10 miles from my town to Newark Airport could be a nice, relaxing jog for him before he left. As far as my race goes, being up at 3:30am when you’re racing at 10am isn’t even something recommended by the “Dean K School of Running Prep.”

Gettin’ my STRETCH on!

Third on the list? My damn foot cramped up. SERIOUSLY – I’ve been exclusively training in the Five Fingers now for a month with NO issues outside of the norm. Then, all of the sudden, the arch on my left foot cramps up 2 hours before the race. Can’t make this s**t up if I tried. If you know me, or have read my blog before, you know that I PLAN… I plan a lot and I plan early. Because I like to be prepared. Random foot cramping does not fall into my planning mentality well AT ALL.

And finally – IT WAS HOT. For a guy my size who spent his entire half-marathon training in the winter months, this was/ is/ will continue to be a HUGE challenge. Big dudes don’t do well in the heat… throw in the mix a competitive road race and you’re asking for trouble.

TO RECAP: I’ve been up since 330am, filled up on breakfast before running and got a foot cramp before racing on an 80 degree day. So what happens?

I run like the gahdamn wind and set my 5K PR by OVER 7 MINUTES.

Like I said before – I can’t make this s**t up if I tried.

Six of us ran this race – myself, regulars Nancy and Martin and newbies Jennifer (accomplished triathlete and all-around bad a**), Michele (running her FIRST EVER 5K) and her friend Lauren (who is a ‘living healthy’ success story all to herself). So… the race starts and Nancy and I go. Like ‘go’ go. And 10 minutes later we’re at the first mile marker.

Just in case you missed that: 10 MINUTES LATER we’re at the first mile marker.

“Somebody” decided to just take the hell off and ‘run like he stole something’ (to paraphrase a post my friend sent me via Facebook this week). Nancy’s right with me, and everyone one else is behind us. I don’t know what got into me. We both decide it ‘might’ be a good idea to scale it back a bit (Translation – we slowed down because we would have both died if we kept that pace up.) So we bring it back to a reasonable pace and get to Mile 2. Jennifer catches up for a bit, Martin is back there somewhere, Lauren is completely MIA and Michele is BY FAR the smartest of the group, keeping a nice reasonable pace… you know, because it’s 80 freakin’ degrees out.

Post-race…

Right around the 2.5 mark, Martin catches up to Nancy and I… so now it’s a race. I’ve never been in this position before – to have the ability to actually compete against my running friends at the end of a race. I’m always well behind just lumbering along waiting to see all their smiling “already finished the race” faces waiting for me when I cross the finish. But, for the 1st time EVER, I’m in the lead pack. And let me just tell you, it’s competitive up there. You could FEEL the energy and the competition between us. We all took turns jumping out to the lead in the last half mile and, in the end, the winner was:

*drum roll…*

*cymbal crash!*

Post race spread!

ALL OF US. Nancy, Martin and I all finished within 4 seconds of each other with Jennifer less than a minute later. Michele had a personal goal in her 1st race ever – and beat it by ONE SECOND. And Lauren? We found her – AT THE FINISH LINE… She ran it faster than all of us! Everyone did so amazing… I can’t even begin to tell you how fantastic the energy was after this experience. And then we got to spend the rest of the day sitting outside at the winery, drinking local wines and listening to live music. If it were possible to take the awesomeness of this day, bottle it up and sell it I would be a zillionaire…. seriously.

In the afternoon I had a conversation about ‘capturing a moment’ – she talked about recognizing you’re in a moment so special that you stop, take in everything about it (sights, sounds, smells, emotions, etc.) and just store it away so you can revisit it when you need to take a mental vacation…. kinda like your Happy Place.

She said she did that with Sunday. She wasn’t the only one.

RACE: Hair Of The Dog 5K

LOCATION: Silver Decoy Winery, Hightstown NJ

DATE: 5/20/12

TIME: 34:44 (PR – previous best 42:10 1/1/12)

PACE: 11:11

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Space Underwear!

PS – On Saturday, I put up a super quick post about my underwear. Besides the fact that the post somehow got the most views for 1 post EVER in the history of my blog (still trying to figure THAT one out), I had a lot of questions about how it went using them for the 1st time.

IT WAS AMAZING.

I can’t really ever justify spending $100 for performance underwear… but, if I could, I would tell every guy that does anything athletic to run out and cop a pair of RevolutionWear Frigo No. 1’s. I didn’t have to adjust ‘the team’ once all day… and any guy who’s worn compression shorts/ pants knows how impossible that usually is.

Technology is freakin’ amazing… who the hell knew you could make drawers better?!?!